Dosare Externe

The Albanians claim descent from the Illyrian and Thracian tribes that used to inhabit the Balkans in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. However, at the time, there was certainly no notion of Albania itself (unlike Armenia fro instance which is a recognized geopolitical entity and ethnicity for over two thousand years). Then came the Roman Empire and mixing of population.
Then, in the 7th and 8th centuries AD, the Serbs (aka Slavs) came and settled these regions. And Kosovo was a part of the Byzantine and Bulgarian states until the middle of the 12th century, when it became a part of independent medieval Serbia.
During the 13th, 14th and first half 15th centuries, it became the heartland of the Serbian state and the most culturally advanced part of Serbia (hence the hundreds of monasteries). But, with the advance of the Ottoman menace and the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, Kosovo was finally conquered in 1455. At that time, Serbs were around 95% of the population.
Serbs and Albanians co-habitated and lived amicably for centuries until the Albanians started accepting Islam massively during the 16th and 17th centuries. With the War of the Holy Alliance agianst the Ottomans from 1683-1699, and imminent vengence that the Ottomans undetook against the rebellious Serb subjects, they fled en masse during 1690-1691 (approx. 80,000-100,000), leaving Kosovo half-empty. Then the Albanians descended from the hills and began usurping the land.
Sadly, the Albanians, with full support from their Ottoman overlords, began harrassing (to put it lightly) the christian population of Kosovo in order to drive them out and secure the region for the ever shrinking Ottoman Empire. This exploded in the 19th century, when Albanian gangs fully oppressed the local Serbs with numerous recounts in Western consular letters. With the situation being ever so unbearable, Serbia, autonomous from 1830, began making plans to liberate their brethren.
The Albanians started a guerilla campaign against Serb rule (the kachaks) and it lasted until 1925. This of course brought Serb repression and increasing thoughts on how to solve the Albanian question in Kosovo. There were suggestions of deportation to Turkey (Ataturk agreed to this) among many. But all this was stopped by WWII. The rest is history we all know